Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday March 17, 2014 @12:33PM
from the origin-story dept.

sciencehabit writes "Kissing the Blarney Stone, which involves hanging upside down from the battlements of Blarney Castle near Cork in Ireland, is meant to bestow eloquence and persuasiveness. Such claims are not known to have been put to the test in a clinical trial, but then not much is known about the rock itself. Some say it is made of Welsh bluestone, the same material used to make the monoliths of Stonehenge. Others say it was cleaved from the Stone of Scone, which forms the coronation seat used by the kings and queens of Scotland and Great Britain for hundreds of years. Now, some light has finally been shed on the stone's mysterious origins by the chance find of a microscope slide in the Hunterian Museum of the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Analysis of the sample, which is cut thin enough to be transparent, by geologists at the museum reveals that it is not a bluestone, nor is it sandstone like the Stone of Scone. In fact, it is a 330-million-year-old carboniferous limestone typical of that corner of Ireland and contains fragments of fossilized brachiopod shells and bryozoans."

People are willing to allow a complete stranger to hold them while they slide over the side of a 90-foot wall in order to share in the bacteria and viruses of thousands of others on the oft change they'll be given the ability deceive people without offending them.

You can shrug off the stranger there to help you. Although I have helped to get the archetypical American tourist back to safety. He was too heavy for the helper alone to haul him back in.
The view from up there, while you are hanging out of the castle battlement, is terrific!

The magic of the Blarney Stone isn't what it's made of, it's the fact that you have to hold your body over a very tall drop in order to kiss it. It's one of those thing where after you do it you're supposed to be thrilled to be alive, and presumably have something to talk about.

Of course these days it has been ruined by some metal bars that make it impossible to fall off of the castle and die.